My Work

WRITING

from June notes from my sketches of monastic life:These excerpts are from June, 1988JUNE 1.

On this equinox, I have shoten duty, ringing the huge temple bell, so I have arisen at 3:30 this morning. I put on my robes in the early light of dawn and quietly make my way out to the front garden toward the bell. Sometimes there are a few sleepy monks about at this hour, coming down from the graveyard where they’ve spent the night in meditation. Through the morning mist, a great blue heron lifts off the pond. As easily and clearly delusions vanish. I look around to see if anyone else saw, then catch myself. I know part of this Zen practice is about learning to stand alone, but I still want to share sublime moments like this with someone.I climb the steps to the platform to ring the bell. I love this huge bell. It is suspended from a sturdy frame of timbers, but still, sometimes when I stand under it, I imagine it falling down and enclosing me. I could stand up in this bell. Some master craftsman cast it in bronze, maybe when this temple was built, back in the 1500’s. Its sound is the completion of form and emptiness; the huge space inside resonating with the universe surrounding it. To sound the bell, I pull back a log suspended on chains and strike it forcefully against the side of the bell. With just the right amount of strength, the sound can carry for almost a full minute. I chant the Sho Sai Myo Kichijo Darani sutra in between wallops, and like the teaching of Buddha, this sound knows no obstructions. The bell of the neighboring temple, about a mile away, rings in perfect harmony to this one, a minor third above. I’m sure that that has to be by design; the same bellmaker must have crafted both bells. We rarely see the monks of the other temple but three times a day our temple bells make love in the village air.

2.

I had a walk in the garden this evening and came upon quite a show starring a couple of green tree frogs mating in a tree. They pump out these big egg sacks that look like gooey Styrofoam, about the size of a cantaloupe, in branches overhanging water. When it rains, the sack melts and the eggs fall in the water. Many of them are eaten by the red-bellied newts. Occasionally the frogs have a poor sense of aim and construct the sack over a place that will miss the water below. I think about relocating the sack—as a Buddhist monk I’ve taken the vow to save all sentient beings. But I wonder if the frog knows something I don’t. What if a wind comes up during a rain? Then, just as the sack melts and starts dripping, the wind could carry it right into the water. Not so dumb after all. Either that, or the frogs with astigmatism get weeded out by natural selection. As night descends, the air warms up with the dedicated croaks of countless unseeable frogs. The sound from tonight’s species is so enormous, you’d think the musician would be a huge bullfrog. But I’ve tracked these critters down, and their amazing sound comes from an extreme appreciation of acoustics. The little two-inch long amphibians hunker down in hollows, around here mostly sawn-off timber bamboo stumps, or holes in the stonework aqueduct, any place with an appreciable echo. Each individual croaker has only one note in its repertoire, but like the harmonious temple bells, the synergistic effect is electrifying. During evening meditation, I’m lost in a rapture of titillating tempo crescendoing to a raucous frenzy, and culminating in a sudden silence. Then, out of that pregnant pause, first one, then two, then four or five frogs start the pattern again and fill the night air with their procreant urge.